Waiting For Freedom
by KatLeePT
Summary: She's waiting for her time.


She never imagined her life would be like this. She never imagined she would know such sorrow or pain. When she found out she was a Slayer, Faith had thought she couldn't be touched. She was immovable, unstoppable, but her heart had proved even stronger than her body and had stopped her.

It had taken months for her to get the gasps of the dying man out of her dreams. It had taken even longer for her to be able to shut her eyes and not see him looking up at her, his eyes so large with the one question that she'd asked herself far too many nights: Why? Why had she killed him? Why had she had to be a Slayer? Why couldn't she have just been normal?

Or why couldn't she have been more like Buffy? Why couldn't she have the good friends the blonde Slayer had? Why couldn't she have had her support? If she hadn't any one who had truly given a damn about her, maybe she wouldn't have ended up like she had. Maybe she wouldn't have ended up here.

And yet, Faith knows it is partially because she _does_ have people who care about her that she's in here. If Angel hadn't reached out to her, if Buffy hadn't stood up to her, she'd probably still be running scared now, never having admitted it to any one, not even herself. But she did admit it. She did stop running. And that, partially, is why she is here.

Every day, the guards slide her food into her. Every day, people look at her through terrified eyes, afraid they might be the next one she breaks. It didn't take long for her rep to get passed around the prisoners and guards alike. It took even less time for her to show them what happened when some one tried to take her. _Want. Take. Have._ may be words she lives by, but she is no one's to take.

They look at her with fear. They watch her every move. She knows they're terrified of her. Sometimes, she thinks of glowering at them and saying, "Boo," just to see if they really can jump out of their skin like they act like they will if she speaks to them. But she doesn't. She bides her time and leaves them be not because they deserve it - they're all bad people just like she was although there are few other murderers amongst them - but because that's not the girl she's trying to be any more.

She'd like to think that girl died when the man died. She'd like to think she no longer exists, but she knows better. She's still inside of her and always will be lurking just beneath the surface of the woman she tries so hard to be now, just like Angelus is always within Angel. He's learned to control his monster; so will she.

She trains every day not just her body but her mind as well. She shuts her eyes and relives those moments when she made the wrong move, when she made the mistake that cost a man his life. She relives those moments and thinks of how she should have acted, what she should have done that would have allowed him to walk away, that wouldn't have left her with his blood forever on her hands. She tries, too, when she walks amongst the others. She tries to pretend their stares don't bother her; she tries not to want to beat them all to a bloody pulp.

But it's hard, so hard. Some days, she thinks of just giving up, of letting the monster win, of breaking these bars and breaking all those who try to stop her. None of them can. They don't know that, but she does. She's in here only because she's willing. She's willing to learn to do better. She's willing to learn to control her monster. She's willing to learn to be a better person, and maybe one day, years from now, when she's free not because she's taken her freedom but because she's earned it, maybe she will be the type of girl who does have friends like Buffy's. Maybe she'll have that support. Maybe she'll be the girl she always secretly wanted to be.

But for now, she trains. She trains every day as hard as she can, pushing herself to her limits in all ways, enduring not just the physical brute of the exercises she shoves her body through but the psychological of facing all those staring eyes and not snapping a single neck. She thinks of Buffy every day and especially of Angel and all the good they're doing in the world. She can't wait to be free, but she will wait until she earns it. Then the world will know that she, too, can be just as good. She can save the world, and she can have the friends she's always wanted, the friends she has now, and the friends she will then deserve.

The End


End file.
